Solving the Reemployment Puzzle

From Research to Policy

Stephen A. Wandner

Publication Year: 2010

This book provides a detailed insider's view under the Clinton and Bush administrations of the process by which eight social science experiments influenced federal laws and policies to alleviate joblessness in the United States. These experiments, each of which focused on returning unemployed workers to work, are analyzed through their entire policy process: experiment initiation, implementation, and evaluation; policy development; legislative enactment; program development; and program implementation.

Copyright page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

This book is about the interrelationships between research, policy, and
programs that have dealt with the problems faced by experienced, unemployed
workers over the past 25 years. Much of its focus is on a series of social science
experiments that were conducted during the late 1980s and early 1990s....

Ch 1 - Introduction

This book examines how research and evaluation have been conducted,
and what public policy use has been made of research with
respect to employment and training programs over the past 25 years.
It focuses particularly on a series of social science experiments that...

The New Jersey Experiment was the first of eight UI Experiments
undertaken by the U.S. Department of Labor between 1985 and 1996.
The economic and political environment of the time made these experiments
possible and shaped their design. Three key aspects of this environment...

Ch 3 - Enacting Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services

For research to have a direct impact on public policy, a number of
planets have to align, as they did for the enactment of Worker Profiling
and Reemployment Services (WPRS) in 1993. The New Jersey Experiment
and related research about job search assistance (JSA) had been...

This chapter reviews the implementation of the Worker Profiling
and Reemployment Services (WPRS) program and the results of the
first decade and a half of its operation. The first section of this chapter
reviews the WPRS legislation; the second discusses the development...

A great deal of research other than the Unemployment Insurance
(UI) Experiments has provided guidance for employment and training
programs since the 1990s. This chapter reviews the results of a selection
of research, demonstrations, and evaluations that have studied the...

Ch 6 -
Reemployment Services Policy

Incongruously, the demand for reemployment services across the
United States grew a great deal over the decade and a half after 1993,
at the same time that resources were declining. Clinton administration
policies that implemented the Worker Profiling and Reemployment...

Ch 7 - Public Job Training and Training Vouchers

As a result of post–World War II economic and trade policies, the
U.S. Department of Labor has operated public job training programs
for over five decades. The goal of national job training programs has
been to improve the operation of labor markets by enhancing the skills...

Ch 8 - The Self-Employment Experiments and the Self-Employment Assistance Program

The U.S. Department of Labor sponsored two self-employment
assistance (SEA) experiments in Massachusetts and Washington states
during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This chapter examines these two
experiments and the policy lessons learned from them. It discusses how
the experiments led to the enactment of the federal SEA legislation. It...

Ch 9 - Work Sharing

Work sharing—also called short-time compensation (STC)—was
the experiment that did not happen.1 As work sharing emerged as a U.S.
public policy issue in the 1970s, the Carter administration announced
a 1977 plan to have the federal government take a leadership role...

Ch 10 - Reemployment Bonus Experiments and Public Policy

The idea of reemployment bonuses originated in 1974 in Japan,
where unemployed workers can receive a cash bonus for accepting
a new job, but they cannot receive reemployment bonuses more frequently
than once every three years. Reemployment bonuses also have...

Ch 11 - Summary and Conclusions

This book has examined the impact that research has had on U.S.
employment and training policy and programs over the past 25 years.
It has identified employment programs that work and employment programs
that do not work. Some programs that work have been pursued...

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